Not Spending Money

Research shows that turning down your thermostat by even a few degrees can result in significant energy cost savings over time.

Personally, I get cold easily.  I hate being cold.  Turning down my thermostat even slightly means being more cold.  In my own home, I have decided that keeping the heat up is one of the little luxuries that I don’t mind splurging on.  However, I have not always had lived in situations where I’ve had control of the thermostat, and luckily, I have learned a lot of stay-warm techniques that do not involve cranking up the heat.  Here are seven ideas for maintaining a comfortable body temperature in a colder house.

1.  Dress warmer.

Instead of wearing thin summer pajamas in the wintertime or expecting to stay warm with sweat pants and a Tshirt, get comfortable wearing another layer inside the house.  Even just putting on a sweatshirt, robe, or switching to winter flannel pajamas can help keep you warm when your thermostat’s turned down.  And keeping socks or slippers on your feet while in the house can also help keep you warm.

2. Use blankets

I like to curl up under throw blankets when reading in my living room. You can also add an extra blanket or two to all the beds in the house to keep everyone snug when you turn the thermostat down at night.

3.  Move Around More

My favorite indoor activities involve lounging around, but there are lots of things to do to get the blood circulating.  Do you have any interior decorating projects you’ve been putting off?  What about organizing that closet?  Do you have gift wrapping to do?  Is there a room you want to rearrange?  If you avoid your normal exercise routine because it involves walking, running, or scraping ice off the car to go to the gym, can you re-create an indoor version?

4.  Spend more time outside

Especially when it’s cold outside, spending time outdoors will make the inside seem warmer.  This may seem counterintuitive, because spending time in a cold outside will make you colder, except that chances are you’ll be moving about a lot more outside.  Maybe you’re shoveling snow for yourself or your neighbors. Maybe you’re hanging Christmas lights or finding the best walk in your neighborhood to view the change in seasons. Like #3, this suggestion gets your blood circulating and will warm you up.  And then when you come back inside, it will feel toasty warm.

5.  Drink hot beverages.

Maybe this is why I learned to love tea. Regular tea, in my opinion, tastes best with a little milk and sugar, although some people prefer it without. There are a variety of herbal teas that don’t have the bitterness of regular tea.  Coffee, hot chocolate, warm milk, hot cider, wassail, and various other concoctions are all good at warming the insides. If you are a regular drinker of plain water, try switching to hot water during the colder seasons.

6.  Stop all the drafts.

Thin windows, ill-fitting doors, uninsulated walls are all ways for the cold to sink in.  Even hanging up blankets over passageways or windows can help trap the heat in.

7. Cook a lot

Having the oven and stove on throughout the day will create a lot of heat in the kitchen, and spending time there will make it one of the warmest rooms in the house.  There’s the added benefit of eating the hot food once it’s prepared.

Image courtesy of freefoto.com

There are about a million things I want to do with my house.  I would like to update the kitchen and bath, refinish the floors, replace the windows, paint the exterior, and landscape the yard, just to name a few small projects.  It’s not that the house is in bad shape; it’s not. It’s a trim little house with everything in order.  But it’s an older home, and I like to dream big.  It’s just how my brain works.

I don’t have the money right for new windows or refinished floors or climbing roses. Since I’ve been making the house a priority, my “Things I Want” account is at a minimum.  I pretty much just got a Big Thing I Want (the house), and that’s it for a while.  But that doesn’t mean that I can’t make any progress, or that my hands are tied until my next paycheck comes in, or that I have to sit around being grumpy because there’s an endless supply of things to spend money on.

So I made my dream to-do list and included everything on it. Everything.

Then I wrote another one, which only had things I could do for free.

Amazingly, there was a lot on that second list.  And what was surprising (or maybe not so surprising) was that each item requires work.  Some items require a LOT of work.

For example, my perfect future garden needs a compost pile– that doesn’t cost anything.  But I’ve been too lazy to put my fruit and veggie trash in a separate pile, too busy to walk around my yard and decide on the best spot, too distracted to rake leaves into a pile.

My perfect future garden also has flowers. I haven’t decided on what kind yet, but flowers can be expensive.  As a housewarming present to myself I even bought a huge bag of daffodil bulbs to plant, just so I can get started before the winter.  But I had been too busy to plant bulbs, and it’s been a little chilly outside and I needed a nap.

And I can just imagine how nice the yard would look edged in a nice mulch where I want the future beds and paths to go– I could put a really nice bark up against the house and edge the walkway.  But fall leaves, which make a wonderful mulch, are free for the taking and would nicely blanket all my trees, if only I raked them up.  But raking leaves is not nearly as much fun as getting a truckload of bark, and they don’t always look as professional.

Inside the house it’s the same. I want built-in bookshelves, but haven’t found the time to unpack all my books on to the existing shelves, or the energy to piece together all my old cheap bookshelves.  I want a guest bed and fresh new bedding, but I haven’t found time to do my laundry this week yet.  I want new windows, but have yet to scrape off years of accumulated paint from the original tile windowsills.

I realized I have plenty to do and get excited about without spending a cent.

Once I made my new list, I realized that part of what is so exciting about spending money is that you can feel like you are making progress without actually doing a lot of work.

The daffodil bulbs were the prime example. Just by buying that big bag for myself, I felt like I already had put in an entire garden, without actually breaking a sweat. But of course, the bulbs sat there, in my kitchen, near the dirty dishes, nowhere particularly near my garden.  The spending part of the fun was over, but I hadn’t actually accomplished what I was paying for when I bought them.

So last Saturday, I had time, and I had my daffodils. I spent the day planting the entire bag; one hundred and twenty five bulbs.  Then I raked my lawn.  And last night, I scraped the old paint off one single tile on my windowsill.  It looks beautiful.

Some day, when I save enough, I can put in new windows.  But not today.  I’m too busy.

Image courtesy of FreeFoto.com

In reading this blog, one might get the impression that I am against spending money.

This is not true. I love spending money. But it’s simply not a very sustainable pasttime.

Saving isn’t an end by itself.  It really doesn’t do me any good to die with millions of dollars in the bank because I’ve prided themselves on an aescetic existance. Or worse, because I’ve been stingy and avoided using my money to make the world a better place, such as paying for a hospital, donating to libraries, or even just stimulating the economy.  Money’s true power really only comes into play when it exchanges hands.

But you can’t spend money you don’t have coming in. In order to have enough to spend on something you really want, you have to say no to the things that in the long run, really aren’t that big of a deal to you.  And you have to say yes to the things that are. We work hard to save where we can so that we can spend where we want.

The other day, I bought a house.

It’s not a large house. But I wouldn’t have been able to do it at all if I hadn’t started bringing lunch to work every day.

For you, it might be retirement. Or the proverbial “rainy day” (As this past year’s massive layoffs have shown, rainy days do happen.) Or it might be a trip. Or that thing you wanted. Or college. Or someone else’s college. Or maybe you’re saving enough to be able to quit work and save off the interest.  Whatever it is, spending money isn’t evil. But most of the time, the more you save, the more choices you have in your spending. We all have the equivalent of a house that we want, that is difficult to afford, that we’d really not mind making sacrifices for if we only knew it was attainable.

And that’s what helps us make the little choices– when we know that the little choices add up to big ones.

What’s your house?

I wanted to do a lovely long post about gardening, and then found this book in the library and realized that they’ve done a much better and more thorough job than I ever could hope to write on the subject. If you like gardening, I would highly recommend this book.

The Frugal Gardener: How to Have More Garden for Less Money, by Catriona Tudor Erler, is an excellent resource for any gardener, and specifically those who enjoy the concepts that I discuss here on Not Spending Money. The book has so many wonderful tips and ideas on growing things for less and making a garden thrive on a limited budget that I couldn’t include them all in one blog post even if copyright laws allowed, so i’ll just share a few of my favorites here and encourage you to go read the book.

The book discusses a number of techniques for not just saving money during the gardening process, but avoiding spending in certain areas altogether.  Some of my favorite not-spending tips are:

• Some plants grow well from cuttings– you can just cut some of the plant off and stick it in the dirt. If properly tended, they’ll just grow roots and become a new plant. There are lists in the book of which plants do well with this method and how to care for them.
• You can grow plants from seed for your garden, and collect the seed for free from a number of places — your own garden, a friend’s garden, or even an amicable place of business if they have flowers for ambiance (as long as you ask permission to take the seeds!) Instructions on raising plants from seed are in the book.
• You can build good soil without expensive chemicals by making a compost pile and using the compost in your garden.  Good sources of compost ingredients are your kitchen scraps, waste from tree removal services, or a nearby stable.   There are additional tips on building a good compost pile.
• You can fight garden pets and diseases using existing household supplies, mulching properly, or even wise planting combinations.
• Dried herbs from your garden can make terrific presents, especially to your friends who like to cook!

For those times when spending money is a necessity, the book talks about making sure your dollar goes a long way and you get the most for your buck.  Some tips on good spending are:

• Buying better-quality tools means that they will work better, save time, and last longer than cheaper varieties.  Keeping them well-maintained is important, too. These guidelines will save you money in the long run. There are tips on what to look for when buying yard tools.
• Buying the healthiest plants you can will save you money on replacement costs and will yield more plants because they’ll grow faster.  The book talks about what to look for in healthy plants.
• By stretching the growing season, you can make the most of your money by growing more plants. You learn when the last frost is in your area and start plants indoors accordingly so they’ll be ready to grow when the weather is warm.  You can also cover your plants with plastic or blankets if you need to keep in extra heat.
• Installing a drip system will enable you to water your plants deeply over time.  Not only will this save hundreds on your water bill, but it’s better for the plants because it encourages them to grow deep roots and also ensues they are not neglected.

The aspect of the book that I like the most is its core mindset that frugality is about removing barriers to what you want to do, not installing them.  It’s not about taking shortcuts for a cheap effect or learning to deprive oneself because of budget restraints. Frugality is about opening doors, not closing them, whether it is in the garden or elsewhere in life.

I would like to point out that I have no affiliation with the author or publisher whatsoever; I just found this book in the library and think it’s absolutely terrific.  It had so many good tips and ideas that I just had to share it with all of you. If you are a gardener, see if your library has this book and see if you find it as inspirational and helpful as it is to me. Or if you have read it already, let me know how you’ve implemented these tips and ideas in your own garden!

The Perfect Guest Room?

Overnight guests come to the smallest of homes, and I know I have a real desire to make them feel welcome and have their guest experience really be enjoyable.

In my perfect world, this would involve:

• A perfect, pretty little guest bedroom set up just for them
• Clean and fluffy blankets, towels, and pillows in their closet (in addition to the ones in the bath and bed) so they can use as many as they like
• A cleared closet with a luggage rack and hangers for their personal belongings should they need it
• Fresh flowers in their room
• Their own bathroom, fully stocked with all neccessities
• Having a full complement of extra toiletries available for anything they’ve forgotten
• Taking time off work during their visit
• Stocking the room with a magazine or two that they like
• Being able to take them to see the local sights during their visit
• Take them out to dinner while they’re here

Each and every one of the above points can become really expensive, and sometimes beyond the reach of us mere mortals to provide, so I want to identify the root things going on here instead of just addressing the symptoms. Why is this important to me?

Ultimately, it’s not the separate bath, full guest suite, and dinners out that are important, but the desire to communicate that they are expected, wanted, and well-cared for in my home. This is perhaps the most important realization, because there are plenty of ways to provide those feelings and experiences in my home without the items on my expensive guest-needs list above.

Have you considered alternatives to a guest room?

If you live in a smaller home, as I do, it might not be possible to provide a separate guest room. There may be ways to get around this– have you considered asking members of the family to share to provide their rooms? Have you offered your own room, and set up a bed elsewhere in the house for yourself? If this isn’t reasonable, then where will the guest be sleeping? Let’s say you have a sleeper couch, day bed, air mattress, or futon that you are planning on setting up for your guest once evening falls. These can be quite comfortable options, but a little extra planning can help the guest feel as special as though they had their own suite.

The Importance of the Guest Space

Even if you don’t have a guest suite, having a designated “guest space” can be a very strong way of expressing welcome to a guest.  One benefit of a guest suite is privacy, so think about ways you can provide privacy for your guests while they are around. Is there a niche in the house somewhere that you can place your extra bed that will offer a little more privacy? For example, can that air mattress be set up in a little-used dining room, and the table and chairs moved out/aside for the duration of their visit? Is it a bed that can be left up during their entire stay, so they have a place to rest during the day or leave their stuff when you go out? Do you have a folding screen that you can place to provide them with a little extra privacy? Even just re-arranging some living room furniture can introduce a nook in a public space that guests can feel is a little separate from “everyone else’s” space.

People need a place to put their things during their stay. Regardless of where you find it, there needs to be some “guest space” that they can claim. If this space is in the middle of the living room, plan a place where they can put their luggage out of the flow of traffic. Maybe it is under a nearby table. Even providing a nearby chair “just for them” will allow them to drape their belongings over it during their stay. People can be very territorial, and one of the displacing things about being a guest is not having “one’s own space.”

Setting up the space for them lets them know that you are excited to have them around and provides a more polished experience.  Ideally, a guest bed will be set up in this space upon their arrival, so when they see it, they’ll know that you’ve gone to the effort to prepare.  However, in some cases this isn’t possible, such as when you need the main couch to make a bed.   In these cases, it can be welcoming, if not slightly magical, for a guest to suddenly come in after a walk or a shower and see that their bed is all made up for them where none was before.  The main thing here is that they will feel like they have a space all just for them, even if you cannot afford a whole guest suite and are inviting them to sleep in your living room.

Tips for your Guest Space

• Whether they are sleeping on the couch, futon, rollaway, air mattress, or
  

  Hotels can make sofa beds look welcoming.

  couch cushions, make the bed up nicely with pretty sheets and matching blankets to the best of your ability.  Go to the extra effort to do hospital corners on the sheets, fluff the pillows, and turn the sheets down nicely. Would a throw blanket look welcoming at the foot of the bed? What about the throw pillows from the couch?  Going to the trouble to make it look pretty helps the event feel more deliberate and less thrown together.

• Have plenty of blankets and pillows on hand, just in case. Having some nearby, in a closet or folded neatly on a chair,  means that the guest won’t have to ask if they get cold in the night.
• Pick out some books they might enjoy for bedtime reading and furnish the guest space with them. If you don’t have any they might enjoy, a trip to the library for a popular novel might not be a bad idea.
• If the bed is on the floor, find a way to provide some nightstand space for them.  Some guests like a place off the floor for their water, glasses, jewelry, etc.  If there’s no table nearby, maybe you can pull in an occasional table from another room, or use a low trunk or bench.
• Arrange the table lamps so that they are convenient for bedside lamps. Ideally, the guest would be able to turn it off without getting out of bed.

Even this couch-cushion bed on the floor looks inviting when prepared well.

The Rest of the House

Of course, hosting overnight guests goes beyond preparing a place for them to sleep, although that’s the main difference between overnight and regular guests.  There are other things that don’t cost any money that you can do throughout the rest of the house to help them feel at home.

• Clean your home as much as you have time for before their arrival.
• Make sure the bath they’ll be using is comfortable.  Do you have a fresh set of towels laid out for them?  If the bath they are using is also the powder room used by others during the day, do you have a separate towel available for drying hands, or are people expected to use your guests’ towels? (Please, have a separate one.) Do you have a candle you could place in there? Have you made sure all the surfaces are clean, especially the mirror? As a finishing touch, you could fold the toilet paper into a little point like they do in swanky hotels. This is pointless but a fun way to send a message that you care.
• Have food on hand that you know they like, and let them know that they can help themselves.  Even if you have regular meals planned, having a few munchies available takes pressure off you as host and lets everyone be more patient and more flexible with timing of meals and events.

Activities

If in your ideal world you take them to an expensive restaurant or a night out on the town in your home city, and your budget prevents you from fulfilling that, there are a lot of other ways to reach out, provide activities, and share your home and life with them that don’t cost money.

• You might have a favorite park where you can go and place a blanket in the shade and play frisbee.
• You might have some favorite walking routes that you can share with your guests.
• What do you do in the evenings? If you like board games, do they? If you have a movie you think they’d like, can you check it out of the library? If you garden, would they enjoy helping? Is there a recipe you could enjoy trying together? Sometimes just doing what you do normally is perfectly fine for guests as well.
• Do you have a favorite bookstore you want to show them? A favorite coffee shop? A favorite street of shops?  Are there any local festivals that weekend?

And ultimately, if you haven’t seen your guests in a while, you’ll probably enjoy sitting around and catching up just as much as any other activity.  And if they are close to you, they’ll probably just enjoy sharing in your life, regardless of what it is.  If they’re coming to visit you and not your city, it almost doesn’t matter what you have planned! Having a few ideas on hand is nice and can help them feel like you are excited for them to be there, but good friends don’t expect you to be the Ritz and will enjoy whatever you have to offer.